Tales From The Backlog

…VIDEO GAME OPENINGS/INTROS

When you boot up a game, the first thing that should greet you is a welcome to the world that you are about to enter. A good opening should describe the game perfectly with its choice of music and images. Openings can be five minutes long or just 5 seconds, but if it is successful at captivating you then it has completed its job. Most recent games have opted out of long cut scenes so that players can get into the action as fast as possible. This is a shame since some openings had the best song on the soundtrack. Some have even become staples to a series and without the iconic opening theme it makes the experience feel weird to begin with.

To get started, I had to come up with some rules on how I was going to go about selecting items for this list. What made this list difficult to make were narrowing down the ones I did know and considering ones I have not played, but liked their opener. These are the rules as follows:

• Must be an opening movie OR opening cutscene that happens at the start of the game before pressing any button.
• Must be accompanied by a musical theme. 
• Title screens do not count since you have end it yourself (rip Xenoblade Chronicles OP)
• Try to limit myself to two games per franchise (1 mainline and 1 spinoff). This rule may be broken if I can justify it.

As list go, this is my personal opinion solely and not meant to be any type of definitive list whatsoever. I am also interested in hearing what are some openings that you enjoy so much that you have to let it play out before starting a game. Let me know some of of some other great openings because I am only one person who has not seen it all. With that, I hope you enjoy this year’s advent gaming calendar. The first post will go up on December 1st!